NGO Partners Archives - CLEAR Global https://clearglobal.org/tag/ngo-partners/ Wed, 31 Jul 2024 15:50:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://clearglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/cropped-CLEAR-SM-Logos_Blue-1-32x32.png NGO Partners Archives - CLEAR Global https://clearglobal.org/tag/ngo-partners/ 32 32 Breaking down language barriers in oncology https://clearglobal.org/breaking-down-language-barriers-in-oncology/ Wed, 31 Jul 2024 15:47:53 +0000 https://clearglobal.org/?p=69318 Effective communication bridges cultures and drives progress. With 7,000+ languages worldwide, TWB and Evidence Aid rise to the challenge. Let’s learn together!

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Breaking down language barriers in oncology

The vital partnership between CLEAR Global and ecancer

Breakdown of projects undertaken by CLEAR Global for ecancer

“As an oncologist at ecancer, our collaboration with CLEAR Global/Translators without Borders has been transformative. Their expertise in translation ensures our oncology content reaches healthcare professionals globally.”
Dr Federic Bakal, Fundación Arturo Lopez Perez (FALP), Chile

CLEAR Global is proud to collaborate with partners dedicated to making a difference in the lives of people around the world. By supporting them in their missions, we can achieve our own – of helping people to get vital information and be heard, whatever language they speak. 

UK-based charity ecancer is dedicated to improving cancer care globally through education. They believe cancer patients everywhere deserve the best care. By providing high-quality knowledge of cancer treatment, they help healthcare professionals to improve their skills, in contexts ranging from Latin America to India and Nepal and from Cambodia to Tanzania and Senegal. Increased access to resources and education leads to improvements in patient care.

Partner ecancer uses the Internet to share vital information in a range of languages

The organization hosts ecancermedicalscience, an open-access cancer journal that serves under-resourced communities. The journal’s goal is to help reduce global inequalities in cancer care and treatment by providing free access to all articles immediately upon publication.

The journal welcomes articles on a wide range of topics related to cancer, including molecular biology, genetics, epidemiology, and controlled trials, especially those that are independent or publicly funded. It also considers articles related to health systems, cancer policy, and regulatory aspects of cancer care. The comprehensive scope of ecancermedicalscience makes it an important platform for advancing research and knowledge in the fight against cancer, particularly in communities that might otherwise lack access to such resources.

Our partnership breaks down language barriers

“Thanks to TWB, we break down language barriers, improve accessibility, and empower diverse communities. This partnership reinforces our commitment to inclusive cancer care.”
Dr Federic Bakal, Fundación Arturo Lopez Perez (FALP), Chile

The partnership with Translators without Borders (TWB, now part of CLEAR Global) began nearly ten years ago, because ecancer were aware of the importance of language in reaching a global audience. They recognized that breaking down language barriers was crucial to achieving their mission. This understanding came from feedback received from readers, authors, and collaborators who struggled to access or understand content as a result of language issues. 

Accurate translations help healthcare professionals stay informed about global developments, share their insights, and ultimately improve patient care. CLEAR Global’s partnership with ecancer is a way of removing the language barriers that block the spread of vital medical information on cancer care, enabling diverse communities to access cancer care information in their own language. This is in line with ecancer’s mission of offering complete, patient-centered cancer care and supporting healthcare professionals in delivering quality services to people affected by cancer globally.

Culturally appropriate translation helps expand access and build trust

To achieve this, ecancer adapted their approach, prioritizing key content for translation, working with language experts, and creating user-friendly multilingual interfaces. They focused on reaching out to diverse communities in languages such as English, Spanish, Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, French, German, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese.


Through its partnership with CLEAR Global, ecancer became even more aware of the role language and effective communication play in the medical field. Effective communication is more than just translation; it calls for a deep understanding of cultural differences, and adapting content accordingly. Working with language experts ensured that the content was translated according to the cultural and linguistic needs of target audiences. This led to better engagement and trust, facilitating meaningful interactions, knowledge sharing and collaboration in the global healthcare community.

In addition to content for healthcare professionals, the collaboration has extended to crucial patient-facing content. By translating and subtitling materials such as Relieving Cancer Pain at Home, The Cancer Patient’s Role in the Decision-Making Process, and resources on managing pain and the emotions that come with it, CLEAR Global and ecancer have made critical information directly accessible to cancer patients.

Oncology communication in Chile: a case study

Translation expands the influence of research findings from Latin America

The partnership also has the benefit of making the findings of research conducted in other languages available in English, enabling it to reach a wider audience and influence global practice. One such collaboration was the translation from Spanish to English of Knowledge, Practice, and Communication Barriers for Oncology Doctors in Chile When Addressing the Sexuality of their Patients.

This study examines the communication challenges oncologists in Chile face when discussing patient sexuality. Cancer and cancer treatment can greatly impact a patient’s sexual wellbeing, with consequences for their quality of life, self-image and relationships. That makes effective communication about sexual health an important aspect of oncology. The study highlights a gap between recognizing the importance of sexuality and actual clinical practice, revealing a need for institutional support and training to better integrate sexual health discussions into cancer care.

Volunteer linguists played a vital role

As the project relied on volunteer translators, the project manager, Giulia Gasperoni, sought out community members with experience in the medical field to ensure accuracy and quality. To maintain high levels of engagement and motivation, she ensured that community members had as much context and information as possible. When a community member claimed a translation task, Giulia reached out to share references and additional information. She also provided more background on ecancer and explained how the translated texts would contribute to its mission. Follow-up emails checked on the volunteers’ needs and offered assistance, making sure they knew their contribution was valued

“I am really glad that I was able to help on this project. I think this is such an important topic in today’s society and hopefully my translated words will help many people in both the present time and in the future.”

Suzanne Skirrow, TWB community member

In-kind sponsorship enabled specialist revision in a tight timeframe

Finding the right linguists from within the TWB community to revise the translation was a challenge for such a large and highly specialized text, especially as the deadline was tight. One of CLEAR Global’s in-kind sponsors, Surrey Translation Bureau, stepped in to offer the services of their linguists to complete the project. 

Established in 1984, Surrey Translation Bureau has been an in-kind sponsor of CLEAR Global for several years, formalizing its support in 2021. This work forms part of STB’s corporate social responsibility framework, which aims to make a positive impact beyond the core business operations of the company.

“We were delighted to play a small part in ensuring cancer patients can receive the highest quality information. Our role was to check the overall accuracy and consistency of the English translation, ensuring the correct terminology was used – crucial for any text being used in the medical sphere. We’re proud to work with expert medical linguists who share our values and our translator appreciated the additional context provided by the ecancer team as this helped bring the material to life, improving the overall quality of the final text. To know we’ve played a part in improving the outcomes for cancer patients is incredibly rewarding to the whole team at STB.”

Amey Higgon, Head of Project Management at Surrey Translation Bureau

Volunteer with CLEAR Global

ecancer’s success in making vital cancer research accessible underscores the crucial contribution of volunteer translators. This work directly impacts healthcare professionals and patients, helping spread knowledge and foster collaboration globally. 

 

CLEAR Global is proud to be able to offer a rewarding volunteer experience to our community members. Volunteering is a meaningful way to use your skills for the greater good while also joining a global community of dedicated individuals working to ensure people can get vital information and be heard, whatever language they speak. If you want to join the TWB volunteer community, you can register here.

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]]> Learning lessons from the past – in your language https://clearglobal.org/learning-lessons-from-the-past-in-your-language/ Wed, 24 Jul 2024 12:14:33 +0000 https://clearglobal.org/?p=69227 Effective communication bridges cultures and drives progress. With 7,000+ languages worldwide, TWB and Evidence Aid rise to the challenge. Let’s learn together!

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Learning lessons from the past - in your language

Evidence Aid’s partnership with CLEAR Global (Translators Without Borders)

While sitting on a train to Toronto, I’m struck by the linguistic diversity around me – a woman speaking Hausa to her child, a man speaking Québécois, two girls speaking Mandarin. Countries are becoming linguistic melting pots, increasing the need for multilingual communication. In the humanitarian field, recognizing the significance of language and its cultural context is increasingly important; effective communication is essential for sharing ideas, scientific breakthroughs and medical discoveries. With over 7,000 spoken languages worldwide, this mission is both awe-inspiring and daunting, yet organizations like Translations Without Borders (TWB) and Evidence Aid (EA) are stepping up to meet the challenge.

The Collaboration: Evidence Aid and Translators Without Borders/CLEAR Global

Let’s start with the impact. Between May 2023 and 2024, Evidence Aid’s resources have been viewed 95,483 times. The most frequently visited translated articles in both Italian and French were on Anemia and iron metabolism in COVID-19 patients, amassing 2,937 combined views. Similarly, the Spanish version of an article about Ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) containing low or no dairy compared to standard RUTF for children with severe acute malnutrition got 535 views, compared to the English version which got just 22 views. More broadly, Evidence Aid had 53,226 users in the past year, with Italy taking the lead with 3,616 users, followed by the United States with 3,503, Sweden with 3,010, and France with 2,179 users. Clearly, translations are crucial since Evidence Aid’s resources are accessed by a variety of countries.

Evidence Aid is a humanitarian organisation that improves the effectiveness of humanitarian efforts by offering free plain-language summaries of research, namely systematic reviews. This empowers stakeholders to make evidence-informed decisions. With 11 collections, Evidence Aid ambitiously covers a broad range of topics. 

Their goal is to create easily readable and accessible summaries of systematic reviews, reducing the research workload for on-the-ground organisations and providing them with effective interventions and lessons from previous emergencies and disasters.

Recognizing that global issues demand global solutions, Evidence Aid saw the need for its summaries to be available in languages beyond English. Thus, the partnership between CLEAR Global and its global community, Translators without Borders (TWB) and Evidence Aid was born. Currently, Evidence Aid receives support to translate summaries from English into eight languages: Arabic, Chinese (traditional and simplified), French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

As noted above, the impact of this collaboration has been profound. 

Clearly, evidence-based research has a significant audience and is actively being used. These statistics also highlight the value of translations, demonstrating their widespread use!

An image of hands holding a tablet displaying a page from Evidence Aid's website

Global issues demand global solutions 

TWB’s enhancement of key aspects of Evidence Aid’s offering goes beyond improving a feature of its product. Consider that the summaries are now eight times more accessible and comprehensible. Imagine if all research was available in this way; free to use, easy to understand and easily available in a central location.

CLEAR Global/TWB also supports and advises Evidence Aid on language inclusivity and accessibility more broadly. According to CSA research (forthcoming), half of the global population doesn’t speak the top seventeen most widely spoken languages. So, while CLEAR Global encourages EA to ensure that their work is accessible in the nine major languages, they also encourage EA to consider their audience and who they really want to be able to access their work.  TWB encourages a shift in perspective, emphasising the importance of not just prioritising dominant languages associated with countries of power and authority. In a subtle but impactful way, this returns power and autonomy to marginalised and overlooked populations, giving them access to information that empowers them to make their own evidence-based decisions free from interference by dominant groups. Without the support of TWB, Evidence Aid’s audience would be eight times smaller, and accessible to eight times fewer people – let’s all learn lessons from this and make reaching as many people as we can a global priority!

Written by Jawaria (Jay) Karim, Evidence Aid

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]]> Supporting digital inclusion for Kinyarwanda speakers​ https://clearglobal.org/digital-inclusion-kinyarwanda/ Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:52:00 +0000 https://clearglobal.org/?p=68736 Local partnerships boost language technology for communities in Rwanda

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Supporting digital inclusion for Kinyarwanda speakers

Local partnerships boost language technology for communities in Rwanda

Digital services can offer vital information, communication, and community – as long as they’re designed for the people who need them. Yet despite innovations in connectivity, service provision, and language technology like large language modeling, only a fraction of the world’s 7,000 languages are meaningfully online. For the billions already locked out, the gap is widening. 

With relevant and appropriate language technology, more of the world’s most marginalized people can access information and be empowered to make decisions that affect their lives. Learn how we work with local organizations and language communities to build relevant, sustainable solutions. 

Paul, CLEAR Global
Paul Warambo, CLEAR Global’s Senior Community Officer for 4 Billion Conversations.

Building language technology in marginalized languages helps close this digital divide

 

Kinyarwanda is the most widely spoken first language in Rwanda. Yet, like many other non-European languages, it is disproportionately underrepresented in the digital space. We partnered with Digital Umuganda, a Rwandan language technology company specializing in African languages to address language-based digital exclusion for Kinyarwanda speakers. For this project, we built and integrated a Machine Translation Plugin into Moodle, an online learning management system so users can switch between Kinyarwanda and English. This enables users of digital learning in Rwanda to access content in their language while also improving their English. The topics in this case were entrepreneurship, digital literacy, and also content on Rwanda’s tourism experience. By building machine translation (MT) capacity between English and Kinyarwanda (bi-directional) we can help the public sector improve communication with communities and access to services.

Our collaboration enabled Digital Umuganda to strengthen its technical capacity to support further projects promoting digital inclusion through language technology. It also showed how our model can catalyze sustainable technology development for marginalized languages, and make good on our commitment to localize aid. In this blog, we explore how we help local language technology experts equip themselves to address language marginalization in their own contexts. The next blog in this series on digital inclusion will look at what we learned about generating language data and building the technology to reach people in their languages.

Engaging Kinyarwanda speakers to generate language data

 

To begin creating language technology like machine translation, you need language data – digitized voice or text datasets in the right languages. Even languages with millions of speakers like Kinyarwanda may not have language datasets that are good enough to create accurate, viable, and domain-specific language technology capacity – yet.  

In order to build machine translation capacity in Kinyarwanda, we mobilized speakers from our Translators without Borders Community, the Mbaza NLP community coordinated by FAIR Forward and Digital Umuganda, and speakers from local universities such as the University of Rwanda’s School of Art Languages. We took a collaborative approach by sharing information about the project goals, the tool they would use to collect and validate language data, and the project’s intended impact. We aimed to ensure our community members had full transparency about the project and how their language data would be used. Demonstrating our commitment to transparency and open communication helped strengthen relationships and foster a sense of ownership between the community and our project team. This approach helped build trust in the technology and the overall project.

"I felt empowered knowing that our voices were being heard and valued in the development of language solutions that directly impact our Kinyarwanda community."

– Jessica Kubito, TWB Community member
People talking around a desk covered in colorful post-it notes
Photo: Yagazie Emezi/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment

We also explored different methods of data collection, on- and offline. In collaboration with Digital Umuganda, we organized a data collection hackathon in Kigali, Rwanda, where community members met in person to work together on generating Kinyarwanda language data. While in-person data collection is more costly, it ensures that people without access to devices or a stable internet connection can engage. It gave community members the opportunity to share their opinions, ask questions, and express any concerns about the data collection tool we were piloting. The datasets collected can be accessed online: e-learning content, tourism experience.

“It was refreshing to see that the project team genuinely cared about our input and feedback. This collaborative approach made me feel confident that the language solutions being developed would truly meet our needs."

– Juvan Mutsinzi, hackathon participant

Understanding communities’ linguistic challenges and needs to design user-centered solutions

 

Community engagement played a pivotal role in ensuring that the language solutions we created were tailored to the local community’s specific needs and preferences. CLEAR Global’s project team gained valuable insights into linguistic challenges, cultural nuances, accessibility challenges, and user expectations through active involvement and collaboration with Digital Umuganda. The sense of ownership fostered by involving Kinyarwanda linguists online and on-site ultimately led to more effective and impactful language solutions that have since been applied in use cases beyond this project’s scope. 

Communities and organizations know their context best

 

We collected localized, domain-specific language data on relevant topics offered through digital learning – entrepreneurship, digital literacy, and Rwanda’s tourism experience. One example of a linguistic challenge faced was how to render in Kinyarwanda concepts related to education systems and knowledge sharing. Knowledge acquisition in Kinyarwanda is embedded in traditional customs and practices. Linguists had to find appropriate phrases that were both accurate and would not risk representing educational content as elitist or reproducing colonial ways of thinking. The Kinyarwanda linguists working on the data collection adapted and contextualized the text. Their input helped ensure the text we used to develop our machine learning tool was appropriate and relevant to the users’ needs. 

To make the most of the community’s engagement we facilitated two-way communication channels between our project team, linguists, and hackathon contributors. This allowed for continuous feedback and iteration to enhance the data collection tool. By actively inviting input and feedback from the tool’s end-users, the project team gained insights into some of the requirements of a more user-friendly tool. For example, Kinyarwanda linguists expressed a preference for a solution with intuitive navigation capabilities and a user-friendly interface. Language data collectors also emphasized the importance of making the language data collection platform easily accessible to individuals with varying levels of digital literacy, ensuring simplicity in interaction and reducing the need for extensive training. They highlighted the need for more logical features that enhance the overall user experience.

A group of Kinyarwanda-speaking TWB Community members in Kigali, Rwanda at the Digital Transformation Center Rwanda
Kinyarwanda-speaking TWB Community members in Kigali, Rwanda at the Digital Transformation Center Rwanda

Collaboration builds agency, trust, and more effective language technology 

 

Sustainable social impact requires local ownership and long-term commitment. We value the insights of communities such as Mbaza NLP and local organizations – they simply know their context best. When planning projects, we prioritize participatory decision-making to ensure key stakeholders have the agency to shape effective, inclusive, and sustainable initiatives that benefit their communities.

Partnering with local community-based organizations and people experiencing digital exclusion helps us develop digital initiatives that address their unique challenges. Collaboration with end-users from the start also promotes acceptance and adoption of digital interventions within the community. Considering localized challenges, community needs, language and format preferences, and sociocultural dynamics helps us identify relevant use cases for language technology – and assess when a digital solution might not be the best option. 

We have now handed over ownership of the machine translation tool to Mbaza NLP, ensuring the community continues to develop and apply the technology to other use cases beyond this project’s lifespan. Our collaborative approach strengthens our partners’ capacity to address access challenges, helping communities get vital information and be heard long after the project is completed. Digital Umuganda and the local community are now better placed to develop future language technology in even more languages to support other communities at risk of digital exclusion. By pooling our resources and leveraging existing technology infrastructure, we can increase the quality of existing technology, avoid redundancies, and scale our social impact solutions more efficiently.

Starting 4 billion more conversations

 

Four billion people – half the world’s population – are still excluded from important global conversations because their languages are underrepresented online. Our Four Billion Conversations movement #4BC aims to change that with initiatives like the Language AI Playbook to help social good partners integrate technology and mobilize communities. 

Our tech team has supported digital language inclusion in various contexts and languages:

– Learn how our pilot project, TILES (Touch Interface for Language Enabled Services), supported Hindi-speaking farmers in India to access information about climate change mitigation strategies.

– Explore Kompas, our multilingual artificial intelligence platform, curates verified, up-to-date information for people affected by the war in Ukraine.

– Discover chatbots like Shehu, using natural language understanding to answer questions about COVID-19 in Hausa, Kanuri, and English in Nigeria.

– Read our ebook to learn more about how language and communication are key to achieving sustainable development, climate change action, and health care for all.

Do you want to work with us to support digital inclusion in your language?

 

Click here to partner with us.

With thanks to our technology and funding partners:

Digital Umuganda 

Digital Umuganda is an AI and open data company with a mission to enable access to information in local African languages. Digital Umuganda creates open-source datasets, models and tools that make it possible for NLP including Large language models to work for marginalized communities that speak underresourced languages. Learn more at digitalumuganda.com

 

Digital Transformation Center Rwanda

The Digital Transformation Center is a Rwandan-German initiative aimed at developing impact-driven digital solutions in Africa. Therefore, it not only provides advisory services and training for government institutions and local tech companies, but also a modern space to boost creativity and collaboration. Learn more at digicenter.rw

 

GIZ Fair Forward: 

On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (“GIZ”) implements the project “FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence for All” which strives to create a more open, inclusive, and sustainable approach to AI on the international level, and more specifically, to develop artificial intelligence ecosystems locally across its seven partner countries (Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, India and Indonesia). For more information, visit FAIR Forward – Open data for AI (bmz-digital.global)

 

Written by Paul Warambo, Senior Community Officer, and Emily Elderfield, Advocacy Officer, CLEAR Global

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